In the overall timeline of video games, it is quite easy to see a long list of games for a handful of settings. While games have a massively different way of being played its the background setting that can pull players in at a much more deeper level. With games many settings which were once limited to a niche genre of pulp fiction are able to become massive ideas and intellectual properties. Being able to visualize your favorite type of setting is powerful for many gamers. They will chase that feeling down. It could go all the way to the extent of enjoying an otherwise mediocre game, and blinding yourself to its flaws.

Video games are expensive products to make. The multi-million dollar project is not uncommon in the modern game development industry, in fact it's become the standard. It's like proclaiming the cost of production is some kind of bragging right owed to the developer. But now it's become popular to discuss how minuscule a game's team was or how it was made of a six figure budget.

Do you have an Xbox 360 Core or Arcade model? Did you expect it to be able to do what the higher end Xbox 360s can? You did? Well, guess what? You're wrong. Dead wrong.

If you buy Burnout Paradise, the latest installment in Criterion's critically acclaimed series, you'll be forced to play it offline, unless you pay $100 to Microsoft to buy a hard drive.

"Wait a minute? Are you saying what I think you're saying?! Burnout Paradise on the Xbox 360 REQUIRES a hard drive in order to play online?!" Yes. That is exactly what I said. No typos. You MUST have a hard drive in order to play this game online. "But I thought Microsoft said 'every game will work with every Xbox 360 system'?" Yeah they did, but did you see the part that said, "But just like some games will require you to have a Memory Unit to save games, some games will require you to have a Hard Drive to experience them." OH MY GOD! NO WAY!

What does this mean? It means that if you bought a 360 Core or Arcade, you just got ripped-off big time, but not by Criterion/EA, but by Microsoft.

I know, I'm a Sony fan and tend to gravitate to them, but hear me out. Games these days need a lot of space to run, especially big open-world games like Burnout Paradise. Microsoft should have had the foresight to see that this would become a problem and launched the Core model with a 20GB hard drive and the Premium one with a 40GB or so. By not doing that, they basically limited what the developers can do with the system and make them figure out other ways of caching and quick access.

This isn't the first time that the hard drive has been required on the 360 (think of all the DLC for various games, video downloads, Final Fantasy XI, and Oblivion GOTY), but it is perhaps the most notable since Burnout has huge mainstream and casual gamer popularity, and the people who buy this game might not be the ones that have the Elite Super Deluxe model with all the bells and whistles.

The 360's lack of a standard hard drive is also holding back the game industry because now it's getting to the point where the PS3 versions of games are being effected by Microsoft's boneheaded decision. Rockstar and Capcom have already expressed problems with the lack of a hard drive, and I'm sure more are to follow.

But remember, this is one (admittedly biased) guy's viewpoint. So, readers, I ask you this: what's the solution to this problem? Should devs just leave behind Core and Arcade owners? Or what should happen here?